Research Required

With everything comes a level of research and understanding. Or, if one prefers to be ignorant you could become a sucker and either get ripped off or rip yourself off with bad decisions. Now it takes time to accumulate knowledge and understand with research. To become a master of the guitar, you have to practice to acquire the skills and knowledge of becoming a competent guitar player.

This fact eludes some people. I think this is also a matter of taste and it is certainly subjective so I can’t blame folks for some things. One particular thing that consistently irritates me is folks that play really loud music in their cars. I appreciate some good bass to fill out the low end of my car’s stereo but there is a limit to your ear drums. You can’t simply play a pair of super loud subwoofers and possible think what you are listening to is music. It’s noise with a few upper frequency blips and bad lyrics to keep it interesting. It is a lure like the brightly colored feathers of a cock. “Look at me, my car stereo is super loud.” I can’t possibly see the value in that. Again, it’s subjective. Ear damage and unintelligible music. Sounds ridiculous. But even if the music is good it is still unintelligible above a certain loudness.

The last thing I need to do is get on a soap box and tell people what to do. Or is it? Maybe people are so retarded they need some suggestions. Some direction. A lot of people pay thousands of dollars to get told how to think about politics, the environment, society, and issues in college and universities; I myself have attended. So what I have to offer is even better because it’s free (free isn’t always better but at least you can discard what I have to say). If someone thought Kraft singles were the cheese par excellence, then am I evil for introducing them to Cheddar? If folks know about other Cheddars and are paying to learn about the cheese, I’ll tell them about Dubliner or M?nster for free. It’s okay if they come to the conclusion that Cheddar is best… but I find that most people say, think, or do because they’ve been told so. Practicality and sound reasoning are discarded. No one can possibly conclude that it is okay to kill unborn babies or okay to spend gobs of cash on a car (etc., etc.) unless they are stupid, suppressing reason, or selfish beyond all measure.

Another example I’ve had recently a LOT of fun dealing with is a computer for a recording studio. You can’t simply throw a bunch of money at something and figure it will turn out right for what you want. If you want to record hip-hop, go online, read books, forums, visit other artists to learn your craft. Make educated decisions on what you need and want. If you lower yourself to trusting whoever, you won’t get what is best for you.

It’s a huge frustration to me – people who don’t want to learn for themselves. Any craft requires time. You need to get familiar with the equipment. You need to understand the process. Don’t take my word for it. Don’t take the salesman’s word who wants to push another $500 worth of equipment on you. Don’t complain when the things you have don’t work as you think they should. Don’t look at pictures of well known artists and think you need all that. More is not better. Expensive is not better. It’s all about you and your willingness to figure things out for yourself.

This same argument can be applied to our current health care debate. The government doesn’t know what is best for me or my kids. You can’t apply a bureaucratic blanket to fix everyone’s problems without tons of exceptions or rules (more bureaucracy) or most initial cost. It shouldn’t cost me $30,000 to cut a woman open and pull out a baby but it does. Cesareans are en vogue; almost. Can you imagine what lawyers and doctors would be doing with themselves if they were being paid for mostly natural deliveries costing between $500 and $3000? They’d have to sell off their yachts and move into average American middle class suburbia!

So once again the bureaucracy is creating more bloat to fix the symptom rather than addressing the problem.

Last.fm

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